LEVEL STRETCHES

Ebb and flow.

Fits and spurts.

Ups and downs.

Life is not intended to be consistent.

I have accepted this.

For a while, the pace at which I journeyed on my path would have the sort of predictable changes one would experience on a bicycle ride in New England. Looking ahead, a looming hill would allow for the preparation that the next stretch would be difficult and that momentum gained eased the struggle. Coming down the other side would require holding steady with the wind whipping my hair and gravel kicking up behind the tires; applying just enough brake to stay safe; eyes focused on the path rather than my surroundings.

Inevitably, living in New England, level stretches connect the hard pumping struggles and wind whipping rushes, allowing for a bit of coasting and the kind of leisure that allows me to breathe in the trees and whistle with the birds; absorbing the beauty surrounding the path.

Level stretches are where relationships flourish and ideas are born. Coasting allows for conversations with God and for contemplation to run free. Level stretches are where words find their way from racing thought to fingertips, zipping across invisible netting from coast to coast, blog to blog, screen to screen.

I love the level stretches.

I seem to have lost my way.

I do not recognize my path now.

The peaks and valleys are one after another, back to back, hill upon hill and I crave a long, flat, monotonous path to coast for a while.

Perhaps this is how the middle of life is.

Leaving behind the ease of predicable little children and reliable routines, racing day after day to keep up with work and schedules and deadlines, slipping in just under the wire again and again. Handing over car keys and trust all at once to the children whose lives are pulling them to separate. Check, check, checking off days on the calendar at a pace as rapid as eyelid flutter.

Maybe over the crest of the next hill it will come again; level ground for coasting.

I am ready.